Generational differences in urban Thai: Linguistic variation and social relationships

In Thailand there is a commonly known name given to the urban adolescent Thai speech variety [Special characters omitted.] pronounced ' phaasaawairun' which translates to 'the language of the youth' in English. This project uses discourse analysis, projective testing such as the Sentence Completion Technique (SCT) and socio-morphophonetic analysis to identify the phonological and morphological differences in first and second-person pronoun usage that exist between selected phaasaawairun and adult Standard Thai speakers. This linguistic variation is then examined with context to discover whether that variation in spoken urban Thai acts as a marker of adolescent age and close relationships among urban Thai speakers. Using a linguistic anthropological perspective, this project will investigate in what way(s) a linguistic variety such as phaasaawairun of the urban Thai adolescents reflect(s) or signals adolescence and close adolescent relationships. The research is conducted ethnographically through interviews and observations of Thai speakers from Bangkok residing in the greater Los Angeles area. Because these speakers have not resided in the United States for long periods of time, it is presumed they use the same Thai they used while living in Bangkok, Thailand. Given that the investigator of this project has lived in Thai urban areas for over two years, speaks Thai fluently and has heard phaasaawairun before, there are two main questions this investigation seeks to explore. First, does phaasaawairun act as a code among adolescent friends? Second, will age be a determining factor for when an urban Thai speaker decides to stop using phaasaawairun ? As there is little research done on first and second-person pronouns in adolescent speech generally, this study increases the qualitative data collected regarding adolescent speech patterns, and is intended for adaptation for future studies in other language communities throughout the world.